Stump my friend with Tolkien....

*I’m not the only one to note close resemblances between Elvish words and similar words from RW languages.

The webicle “Tolkien’s Not So Secret Vice” by Helge Kåre Fauskanger lists plenty of them:

Fauskanger went on to say “Tolkien willingly admitted that he did not try to avoid the influence of real-world languages.”

The fact that Fauskanger and I came up with two completely different sets of linguistic coincidences suggests that there are more out there waiting to be discovered.

What was Tolkien’s first published work?

My guess is his portion of the Oxford English Dictionary. Unless you count as “published” some of his poems that were printed in high school & college literary magazines. Like “Goblin Feet”. :stuck_out_tongue: